Girl Time

Today was the earliest Clarissa woke up on her own, at 10:30. We headed to the Dole Plantation. It was about a 45 minute drive and I can only listen to “Elsa music” for so long. But I had some great realizations during my drive.

I was thankful that we listened to advice from several friends and rented a car. It made my life so much easier to just put Clarissa in her carseat and let waze direct us than to wait for a bus and try to navigate an island that I know very little about. Also, I think that by the end of the week, I will have driven more in Hawaii than in the last two years in Korea. I also think it’s special that we are staying in Waikiki. My grandparents met in Hawaii and actually honeymooned in Waikiki so this place is part of my history. Though I know it looked radically different in the 1940s!

Then drive was pretty. I didn’t take pictures obviously since I was the one driving. We passed several military bases. I didn’t realize that there were so many here. At one point the sky was so dark, I thought for sure it would storm but it didn’t.

The parking lot was only half full. There is a massive gift shop the size of a department store. There are ladies that tell you to choose a piece of paper to see if you win a pearl and give you a coupon. Clarissa enjoyed picking the papers but I didn’t buy any jewelry.

The Dole Plantation has three paid attractions. The pineapple express is a 22 minute narrated train ride around the plantation. You get to see where they harvest all of their crops and listen to some Hawaiian music along the way.

Each pineapple plant is used to harvest three different pineapples over about 45 months.

I did not realize that Dole had such a variety of foods. They grow pineapple, bananas, cacoa, coffee, sugar cane, coconut, and macadamia nuts on this plantation.

After our train ride we walked down a path to get to the Botanical Garden there. Along the way we paid for bird seed and fed the birds. Clarissa was also very excited about a rooster and his “girlfriend.” I was interested in how far we were from other places. It was almost the same distance to Seoul as it was to New York City. We really are about halfway home this week.

The Botanical Garden was beautiful. It was paved so it was stroller friendly. It wasn’t huge but Clarissa and I enjoyed it. There is a mound on one side where you can see some harvesting machines and a mountain in the distance. Clarissa had fun exploring. It was hard to convince her to leave.

They also claim to have the world’s largest Maze. Clarissa wasn’t interested so we skipped it. You can pay for each attraction individually or pay for a combination of the things you want to do. You can do all three for less than $20.

We headed to the gift shop to try the pineapple whip. There was some sticker shock at first because the smallest one was $5.50 plus tax. But it was a very large serving and we both enjoyed it. They sold more substantial food as well.

We walked through the gift shop for about 20 minutes because there was so much to see. We ended up with two more souvenir pennies. There was a kiosk where a man would tell you how to say your name in Hawaiian and what it meant. He also sold leather bracelets that could be engraved with your name. Clarissa got her English name in pink and I got mine in green.

We had planned a palace and a museum as well this afternoon but traffic was bad and Clarissa was tired so we just came back to the hotel.

The original plan was to have dinner with Tim’s work friends and it was already 4:00 so my goal was to avoid the pool. We did some reading and coloring so it worked for about an hour. Then I convinced her that the playground was an acceptable substitute.

But then the sun started setting over the beach and it was beautiful so I needed to get closer to take pictures… Clarissa had a great time playing in the sand and the water. She was so much messier than if I had just taken her to the pool.

Some teenage girls walked by and they thought that Clarissa was adorable and offered to take our picture. Then I had to convince Clarissa that it was time to go. We did shower off on the way so it didn’t take as long to clean her up as I thought. I think she will request the beach over the pool tomorrow.

Dinner with friends was rescheduled for Friday and we decided to eat at one of the hotel restaurants. We ended up at Bibas for some Italian food. I had my first adult beverage in a restaurant since Clarissa was born. It was called a rainbow. It was pretty and actually tasted good too.